By 
Included in ElderCounsel’s membership is a practice building roadmap that many new ElderCounsel members follow. We call it, “Your Practice Gameplan™.” This Gameplan is a combination of one-on-one coaching, webinars, and self-guided instruction which are all overseen by the member’s personal Member Representative. The goal of Your Practice Gameplan™ is to help the attorney become profitable in their elder law practice as quickly as possible! As part of Your Practice Gameplan™, members are offered the opportunity to be coached by Steve Riley, a Certified Atticus Practice Advisor. Through a series of webinars, worksheets and phone calls, Steve works with attorneys of all firm sizes to help them take better care of their clients, increase their income, decrease their stress, and improve the quality of their life. All who have completed Your Practice Gameplan™ rave about its success and have the thriving practice to prove it!
I’ve embarked on the Your Practice Gameplan™ journey as part of my professional development to grow in my role with ElderCounsel and to help ElderCounsel be successful. The member is asked to come up with a vision for their practice when completing the Gameplan. The next step is to come up with ten crucial goals and explain why these goals are crucial to their vision, and to develop an action plan to achieve these goals. I thought I’d share how I’ve already achieved success by participating in Your Practice Gameplan™ through the steps I’ve taken to attain just one out of the ten goals I laid out.
The very first goal that Steve advises you to create is a health goal. Since I run for exercise, I decided I would take my running to the next level and create a goal to run a half marathon before the end of the year. You may be asking, “Why is this a crucial goal to the vision that I’ve laid out for myself?” Well personally, I believe physical health dictates mental health. If I’m at my best physically, I will be at my best mentally allowing me to succeed in my professional endeavors. Once I established my goal and the reason for why it is crucial, my next step was to spell out the action plan I would need to follow to achieve my goal. First, I wrote that I’d need to run at least five times a week. Second, I wrote that I would sign up and participate in races to prepare me for the half marathon. Then for my third action item I thought, well what can I do to make sure I will want to run a half marathon and whatever that is, it will be the third action item. I decided I had to make running fun! Many would say this isn’t possible but I’ve found ways to make it so!
This past weekend I participated in the Graffiti Run 5k in Denver. In this particular race, runners wore all white and ran through an amusement park while volunteers, spectators and fellow runners threw colored powder at them. The color throwing started before the race had even begun and by the time my wave was at the start line, I was already covered head to toe in pink, orange and blue. The race was a joy, whenever it got tough there were other excited runners cheering you on and to run through the amusement park was such a great experience, I felt like I was getting a behind the scenes tour! By the end of the race, each runner’s previously bland outfit (and entire body) had been tie-died all colors of the rainbow. Most of us didn’t even realize we had just completed 3.1 miles, we were having too much fun! I completed that race excited to do other races and motivated to push myself even more. I returned to work the next morning in a great mood, energized and ready for the day. I was also able to say with pride that I had accomplished at least two of the action items I laid out to achieve my health goal.
While I can go on and on about running, the point of this story is to give an example of how working on your crucial goals is conducive to your professional success. I felt good about myself after I completed that race and more driven to continue to reach my goal of completing a half marathon. Moreover, keeping myself active allows me to have a clear head and I actually feel more invigorated while I’m completing my work. This in turn allows me to be a better ElderCounsel team member and perform at a higher level. I’m achieving the vision that I set at the beginning of Your Practice Gameplan™ and I’m only on my first goal! Steve advises you to keep your goals posted in plain sight, somewhere you will always see them and therefore be held accountable to them. I keep my goals right above my desk and I always smile when I see how much I’ve already achieved. While I have nine other goals that I am working on and have more work to do to achieve my health goal, I’ve come full circle already. More importantly, I already see the effect of how Your Practice Gameplan™ is helping me to succeed.
To learn more about how to become an ElderCounsel member and participate in Your Practice Gameplan™ please contact our Member Recruitment team at info@eldercounsel.com.
